The year was 1981. A young Assistant Superintendent of Prison (ASP) at Tihar Jail, Sunil Gupta, was facing suspension, after a surprise visit of the then Home Minister, Giani Zail Singh. Charles Sobhraj, a notorious serial killer came up to him and asked, “Do you need money?” Gupta declined, gently. It was an apparently kind gesture, unusual for a serial killer, Gupta tells Outlook. Years later, Sobhraj wrote in his book about Gupta’s honesty, that there was only one officer he could not buy with money. Sobhraj, during his time in Tihar, built cordial relations with several officers, inmates, lawyers and journalists.
The Making Of A Murderer: Is There A Murderer In Us All?
Does nature or nurture make a killer? Does the outdated yet still overused category ‘psychopath’ hold any water at all?
When Sobhraj offered Gupta money after he was briefly suspended, was it out of empathy or a classic act of manipulation? “He wanted to exploit my vulnerability and gain my trust,” Gupta said, “because he knew it was an opportunity for him to use me.”
Sobhraj had meticulously cultivated his sphere of influence inside the jail, luring and manipulating guards and prison officials.
He, says Gupta, had a hypnotic charm. Sobhraj would, with his conversational skills, win over the trust of the prison guards and would secretly record their candid conversations using a tape recorder. Later, he would use those tapes to blackmail them, threatening to expose their corruption in court. Once, he used the tapes to gain the authority to run the prison canteen and ended up using them to his advantage.
“He was given the prison canteen to run,” Richard Neville, the author of The Life and Crimes of Charles Sobhraj, once said in an interview, “[it] sounds like small beer. It isn’t. That gives him a lot of power because he gets a rake-off of every deal that goes on in jail to do with food. So he’s in a position of absolute power… he’s running Tihar jail.”
Sobhraj was described as having an antisocial personality disorder (ASPD)—the so-called medical disorder wherein a person shows no regard for right and wrong.
The police would at times smuggle whiskey for him. He would mostly read books regarding jurisprudence and the Constitution from the prison library and would retire to Sydney Sheldon’s thrillers. “Woh Law ka master tha (He was an expert in law),” Gupta tells Outlook, “and he would help inmates with legal advice and petitions.”
When Gupta saw Sobhraj for the first time inside a jail, to him he didn’t pass as a prisoner. Sobhraj wore a neat suit, and perfectly knotted tie and walked with a confidence that “did not appear cosmetic at all”. Gupta had thought the man was an official or some inmate’s lawyer.
Sobhraj was described as having an anti-social personality disorder (ASPD)—the so-called medical disorder wherein a person shows no regard for right and wrong and has no remorse for any wrongdoing. But are these labels, like the one of ‘psychopath,’ of any use?
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The cold-blooded murder of Shraddha Walkar, allegedly by her live-in partner Aftab Poonawalla has led many to draw the conclusion that this 28-year-old man, suffers from a psychopathological disorder. Although, to date, we remain in the dark about vital aspects of the case, especially the psychological ones.
Delhi-based criminal psychologist and author Rajat Kanti Mitra believes that the details of the case appear gruesome, but “it may not be gruesome for Aftab”. Aftab kept Walkar’s dismembered body in his fridge and disposed of it over a period of weeks. Mitra believes that Aftab “is likely to have some personality disorder.” “But,” he says, “one can’t be sure until some tests are done to gauge his psychopathological tendencies.”
Police sources tell Outlook that Aftab loved to have everything around him in perfect order. “He told us, he would have altercations with Shraddha even on having too many altercations,” a source from Delhi police says. From his social media account, we know that he presented himself as a liberal progressive. He would talk about animal rights, the environment and the rights of the LGBTQ communities.
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At the same time, he was involved in a brutal murder. “He carries a charm and talks very confidently, smartly,” the source says, adding, “even though the murder and the way of disposing of the body were gruesome, till now we have not been able to establish the murder as a psychopathic one.”
The killing recalls the infamous ‘Tandoor Murder’ case, in which former Delhi Pradesh Youth Congress president Sushil Sharma killed his wife Naina Sahni and disposed of her body in the tandoor of a restaurant. Both cases have gruesome details, but one can’t conclude whether any of these murders are psychopathological or were simply done in a fit of rage and then the men frantically acted to cover them up.
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However, there have been several muderers termed ‘psychopathic’ killers. For instance, ‘Cyanide Mohan’, a school teacher who raped and murdered at least 20 girls. He would target young girls, from poor families, befriend them, and, on the pretext of marriage, have sex with them. Later, he would offer his victims a ‘cyanide pill’ claiming it was a contraceptive pill. People who knew him found it hard to believe that a school teacher could become a serial killer.
Another such case was what came to be known as the Nithari kaand’. In a Noida village, Nithari, a businessman, Moninder Singh Pandher, an ex-Stephanian, along with his domestic help, Surender Koli, were accused of 16 murders. The case was noticed when eight skeletons were found in a drain by Pandher’s house. There were rumours of cannibalism and necrophilia. Apart from leaving a chilling effect, these cases suggested the possibility of psychopathological disorders in the perpetrators.
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In the cosmos of crime, criminal psychology assumes the centre stage of investigation as it treads into the territory of the criminal probe, carefully delving into the minds of the perpetrators to find the link between the act and the psychological state that facilitates it.
Most of the crimes, especially homicides, that border on the heinous side, are ‘crimes of passion’—committed on impulse when a perpetrator is driven to kill his victim overidden by emotions such as anger. However, what mostly constitute the subject matter of the psychological probe are crimes that are planned and carefully premeditated.
‘Psychopaths’ are said to be inherently unable, or find it difficult, to comprehend the emotions of other people.
“In cities like Delhi, premeditated crimes are very few, and the ones wherein the psychopathic tendencies of the perpetrator surface even fewer,” Sagar Sing Khalsi, Delhi’s Deputy Commissioner of Police (North) tells Outlook. Khalsi’s observation comes from his policing experience of serving across several regions of the country.
Nonetheless, these psychological probes have a dangerous history, wrapped as they are in eugenics, forensics, nephrology and other deeply dubious ‘scientific’ practices.
Interestingly, in India, the law does not recognise psychopathology in unambiguous terms. There is no particular law to convict serial killers. Often, Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) is invoked for convicting offenders. The only provision of the Indian law that addresses offences committed by the people who have an unsound mind is Section 84 of the IPC. It says, “Nothing is an offence which is done by a person who, at the time of doing it, by reason of unsoundness of mind, is incapable of knowing the nature of the act, or that he is doing what is either wrong or contrary to law.”
What distinguishes an ordinary crime from a psychopathic one is that the latter is meticulously planned, and the perpetrator exhibits symptoms or tendencies of a personality disorder. According to the American Psychological Association, a criminal psychopath—though the term is now out of use—is a “person with antisocial personality disorder who repeatedly violates the law”.
What is in the mind?
‘Psychopaths’ are said to be inherently unable, or find it difficult, to comprehend the emotions of other people, and that, in turn, is one of the reasons why they are so selfish and put their own interests ahead of everyone and everything else. They lack empathy or a sense of remorse or guilt. What drives them to commit crimes, according to Mitra, is the acute tendency of deriving pleasure from the act.
“Their pleasure centres are wired in a way that they always fantasise about crimes. They are always and obsessively thinking about committing and committed crimes,” says Mitra, “it gives them a high!”
Mitra recalls an incident from the days while he was working in Delhi’s Tihar jail as a psychologist when during one of the routine group therapy and reading sessions with inmates convicted of heinous crimes, a newspaper slipped in without a censor—an unusual occurrence. Usually, newspapers sent to inmates for reading are meticulously censored by cutting out the news articles mentioning violent crimes. The entire newspaper was filtered, save an article about a horrific shooting incident in Europe, which somehow a jail staffer had missed
cutting out.
“When they [inmates] read the news about the horrific shooting and deaths of dozens of children, their faces glowed with excitement,” says Mitra, adding that most of the inmates in that group were convicted of raping and murdering children.
Besides fantasising about violent acts, says Mitra, psychopaths exhibit an array of characteristics that include being manipulative, and confident, besides carrying themselves in a way that makes them appear charming.
But these are really speculative and voyeuristic theories and claims. As Sigmund Freud pointed out, we are all narcissists and anyone might be painted in this way.
The Making of a Murderer
Developing psychopathic tendencies is linked to several factors that mainly include genetic predisposition and environmental triggers. In their study, Personality and Psychopathology: Genetic Perspectives, G. Carey and D.L. Di Lalla conclude, “Genetic factors exert an important influence on adult personality traits, accounting for anywhere between 30 percent and 60 percent of the variance.” Stressing the idea of inheritance, they add “Heredity is also important for most forms of psychopathology, and plays a major role in several theories that relate personality to psychopathology.” In other words, a person with a particular set of genes is vulnerable to developing a personality disorder in later life. Once again, there is no real scientific proof of this.
Although genetics may play a role, environmental factors are much more vital in creating a person’s psyche, leading him or her to kill. Intrigued by the phenomenon of what happens to children’s brains when they are exposed to extreme stress, Dr. Bruce D. Perry, an erstwhile Senior Fellow of the Child Trauma Academy, an internationally recognised authority on children in crisis, wrote The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, based on his experience while dealing with children having mental ailments.
Charles Sobhraj had a pretty rough childhood too and during his teenage years, he began to commit petty crimes.
Perry writes about Leon, an 18-year-old, facing the death penalty for stabbing two minor girls and raping their dead bodies in his apartment building, a classic case of psychopathic crime. Leon, after killing and raping the minors, ruthlessly stomped on the faces of the victims leaving his boots stained with blood, leaving a trail of evidence that eventually got him caught.
Perry probes into Leon’s family and finds no history of crime associated with them. Leon’s elder brother, Frank, was perfectly opposite to him: a good, empathetic and sensible man. So, what was wrong with Leon, Perry wonders, because “Leon and Frank had shared the same home and parents”.
“Siblings share at least 50 percent of their genes,” writes Perry, adding “While Frank could have been genetically blessed with a far greater capacity for empathy than Leon, it was unlikely that this alone accounted for their very different temperaments and life paths.”
After digging deep, Perry finds that, unlike Frank, Leon’s childhood wasn’t quite right. Leon was a victim of acute parental neglect, his mother, unable to cater to the toddler’s needs, would leave him alone at home for hours, and take the elder boy on outings.
“She left baby Leon alone in a dark apartment,” writes Perry, “My heart sank as I listened to the mother—innocent, yet ignorant of the crucial needs of an infant—describe her systematic neglect of her youngest son… For most of the day, he [Leon] heard no language, saw no new sights, and received no attention.”
Perry writes that Leon had been deprived of the “critical stimuli necessary to develop the brain areas that modulate stress and links pleasure and comfort with human company. “His cries,” writes Perry, “had gone unanswered, his early need for warmth and touch unmet.” As Leon grew up into a teenager, he committed petty crimes like shoplifting and other thefts. With time, he became defter, and the gravity of his crimes escalated.
Charles Sobhraj had a pretty rough childhood too and during his teenage years, he began to commit petty crimes. Like Leon, Sobhraj got his first jail sentence when he was only 19 years old. By and large, researchers have established that early traumas play a vital role and affect vulnerability to different forms of psychopathology and traits associated with it.
However, we should avoid making determinist claims in terms of both nature (genes) and nurture (upbringing). Freud, in his book, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, argued that the boundary between normal and abnormal is neither as watertight nor as stable as we would like it to be. The US, obsessed with taxonomies and classifications based on ego psychology (anti-Freudian and locating everything in the individual as opposed to the social) produces categories like ‘the psychopath’ and perhaps we should be wary of them. This is especially true at the present moment when this murder case is being used by the media to make communal, sexist and unfounded, sensationalist claims, not to mention as fodder to win an election.
Surely it is more important to engage with and understand what the pressures—in terms of caste, class, society and economy (especially in the current conjuncture)– are that push people into violent action, rather than demonising and labelling them as somehow outside of us all and reserved for special condemnation.
(This appeared in the print edition as "The Making of a Murderer")
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